iSSy-SS.] Recent Notes on the Great Aiik. Ill 



A. Newton of Cambridge, into whose hands the collection was 

 placed on arrival, that there were at the lowest computation 

 from 60 to 70 crania. It was not long after my book was 

 published that Mr Edward Gerrard, jun., dealer in natural 

 history wares, London, into whose hands this collection went, 

 sold the last bones in his possession. On 8th September 

 1885, Mr J. Whitaker, Eainworth Lodge, Mansfield, wrote 

 me : " I have bought Gerrard's last bones of Alca ivipennis." 

 From a list of the bones sent me, they appear to represent 

 only one individual. On the 2 2d August 1885, Mr William 

 Eagle Clarke, now of the Museum of Science and Art, Edin- 

 burgh, informed me by letter that Mr James Backhouse of 

 York had some remains of Alca imponnis in his possession. 

 I wrote Mr James Backhouse, sen., and got a most courteous 

 reply, on 21st October 1885, from Mr James Backhouse, jun.. 

 West Bank, York. He says : " In reply to yours of the 19th 

 inst., my father has a set of 35 bones of the Great Auk from 

 Funk Island, which are in a good state of preservation." 

 These bones are also part of the Milne collection. In the 

 Natural History Museum, Bergen, Norway, there are a few 

 bones that were brought from Funk Island by Herr P. Stuvitz. 

 The curator of the museum, Herr James A. Griig, writing me 

 on 5th November 1887, says: "In Bergen Museum there 

 are only a cranium (maxill. inf. are wanting ; the right os 

 zygomaticus is broken off), a pair of maxill. inf., and a right 

 humerus of Alca impennis." 



The bones that were found by the late Professor Wyman in 

 shell-heaps near Ipswich, Massachusetts, are now preserved 

 in the Peabody Museum of Ameijican Archteology and Eth- 

 nology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., as I have 

 been informed by Professor F. W. Putnam, present curator, 

 in a letter dated 29th October 1885. He writes: "The 

 bones of the Great Auk mentioned by Professor Wyman are 

 all in this museum. He afterwards obtained others from 

 shell-heaps on Cape Cod, and I presume there are specimens 

 among the many bones which I have taken from the shell- 

 heaps on the coast of Maine, but which, as yet, have only 

 been roughly identified. Cape Cod is the most southern 

 limit of the Auk bones, so far as I am aware." 



During the summer of 1887 the United States' fishery 



